When you research how to prepare for a job interview, the resources are unlimited: "7 Steps to Prepare for Your Job Interview," "How to Follow Up After an Interview," "Job Interview Mistakes to Avoid," "10 Answers You Should Know Before Your Job Interview," the advice is endless.
With the amount of articles dedicated to the successful job interview, it can be assumed there is a demand for this information. This demand is a result of the pressure, stress and expectations that come from interviewing for a job. This leads us to ask: were job interviews always this way? When did they come into existence? Were they always this tough?
Believe it or not, American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison is accredited in many sources as the first person to conduct a job interview. Before the time of Thomas Edison, the concept of a job opening and applying for a job was mostly unheard of.
Before the start of the industrial age of the late 1700's and early 1800's, jobs were passed down from generation to generation. If your father was a blacksmith, you would expect to train under him and one day take over.
At the beginning of the industrial revolution, factories became huge employers of unskilled workers. And so at first, posting a job opening and interviewing candidates was not necessary. New employees were picked from the street.
As college degrees became more common, and with the advancement of technology and transportation, suddenly employers had more of a selection of credible employees to choose from and this is when a more formulated selection process started to emerge.
At this time, Thomas Edison was seeing hundreds of applicants for any given job opening and was getting frustrated when he found they were not qualified for the job. In reaction to this, Edison came up with 150 questions to test the candidates' knowledge - with some questions related to the job and some questions completely random (ie. In what country other than Australia are kangaroos found?, Who was Francis Marion?, From where do we import figs?). This is what many sources name as the first instance of a formal job interview. Edison's list of questions became famous and soon, other factory leaders were using similar methods to help with the selection process.
Fast forward to today's job interviews and there are some major differences. Aside from the obvious changes in technology (ie. phone interviews and video conferencing), interviews are now also used to find out a candidate's soft skills and cultural fit. To accomplish this, different types of questions are asked such as behavioral questions and hypothetical/situational questions. So as daunting as a job interview might seem, just think of Thomas Edison's 150 impossible questions and it might not seem so bad!
